RICK NIELSEN

We always record with the whole band. That's key to capturing the feel, especially trying to get a good basic track.

Look at Bob Dylan: his voice is not a great sound, but it gets the idea across... and that is what's really important.

I can't stand it when groups come back for an encore, and they play some slow thing. Oh, brother! It's like, 'Had I known that, I would've left.'

It's an honor that people give a crap about us. We're in a rock band; we're not supposed to be treated with any respect.

I never wanted to be Keith Richards or Jimmy Page.

I took one guitar lesson, and they wanted me to play 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' or 'Michael Row the Boat Ashore,' and that was the last guitar lesson that I ever took, so I taught myself what I wanted to know.

I did what I believed in. It got me in trouble, but it also got me a job.

My parents were opera singers. I didn't want to play opera because I wasn't good enough. I didn't want to play their music; I wanted to play the music that I wanted to play, and I'm so lucky that today I get to play that music, even though I don't like every song I write.

I got to work with John Lennon. That was pretty cool.

I didn't want to be one of the Beach Boys or one of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah band. I mean, we appreciated that music. But I didn't want to grow a beard to look like Roy Wood just because I liked him.

No one knows this, but when I would play the clubs back in '65, '66, they used to call me 'Screaming Chicken,' 'cause I would go out and scream, fall on the ground, beat myself, smash stuff, jump through the ceiling, roll on the floor, and act like I was having epileptic fits.

I knew the guys in the Allman Brothers way back in the day, before they were famous.

We all record together. We do it live; then, after that, we do overdubs, if we need to, to repair stuff. Usually when we do stuff, we have to make sure we get the bass and drums down, and by doing it live, you're actually playing the song. You're not piecing together a song.

I like the guys in Cheap Trick. I like playing in it and the music we do.

I have too many options when it comes to guitars.

Some bands, they're too snooty, or they think they're too this or that and wouldn't talk to us. And some other bands are afraid to talk to us.

I have four warehouses full of stuff. I have every boarding pass of every flight I've ever been on. I have all the old contracts that we had from all the clubs and concerts we played, every one of them, up from 1980. Guitar picks and amps - it goes on and on.

We're basically a rock band - guitar, bass, drums and vocals. But we take it further than that. We can be rotten, dirty, and heavy as anyone, but at the same time, we've got a lot of melody.

Some people design buildings and aircraft carriers and cars - and I designed picks.

If you start having to tell people you're cool, you're not.

Some people collect this or that. I'm a musician; I collect guitars.

The song 'Hello There' was written because we never got a soundcheck. 'Hello There' was our soundcheck.

There's no way we could make up what we are. The group is just what everyone is. Each of us has a different audience.

I love to be the loudest thing in the room.

I was three years old, and I walked onstage during a performance that my father was a tenor in 'The Barber of Seville.' I walked out onstage, and people started laughing and clapping, and that was it. That was all it took. Laughing and clapping, I still enjoy today.